Lenovo Fingerprint Can Be Hacked, Windows 7/8.1 Users Exposed

​Lenovo is the latest company acknowledging a security vulnerability in its products, as it discovered that the company’s very own Fingerprint Manager Software features weak encryption and allows attackers to bypass its protection rather easily.

In a knowledge base article released late last week, Lenovo revealed that fingerprint sensors on several ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, and ThinkStation models can be hijacked by cybercriminals by breaking a hardcoded password, in the end getting full access to the vulnerable system.

The vulnerability exists in the Fingerprint Manager Pro builds released before 8.01.87, so in order to patch it, you need to install either this version or a newer one.

Windows 10 users not exposed

Lenovo says the bug only exists on Windows 7 and Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, explaining that on Windows 10, the fingerprint software isn’t required, and thus, users running the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system are fully secure.

“A vulnerability has been identified in Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro. Sensitive data stored by Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro, including users’ Windows logon credentials and fingerprint data, is encrypted using a weak algorithm, contains a hard-coded password, and is accessible to all users with local non-administrative access to the system it is installed in,” Lenovo explained.

“Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro is a utility for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 that allows users to log into their PCs or authenticate to configured websites using fingerprint recognition.”

If you’re the type of user who likes to see the glass half full, then it’s probably worth mentioning that this vulnerability can only be exploited with physical access to the computer, so in case you always keep an eye on your system, you’re probably secure. Patching, however, should be one of your priorities on an affected Lenovo system.

The full list of vulnerable systems is available below, and keep in mind that the patch is only required on Windows versions prior to Windows 10.